The Link (48 page)

“A specially formed commission on lunacy, held in private, found the doctor insane and he was sent to an asylum,” says Cathy. We are back in the car.

“Why in private?” Robert asks. “And why was his identity kept secret?”

“It’s been claimed that he had highly placed connections,” Cathy says. “That, in his professional capacity, he had attended one or more members of the royal family.”

“Dr. Carl Jung said, ‘Nobody can say where man ends’,” Peter quotes. “Dr. Max Born said, ‘“What seems dead is forever in motion.’ Dr. Evan Walker said, ‘Consciousness may exist without being associated with a living system.’ Dr. William Tiller said, ‘New energy fields exist completely different from those known to us by conventional science.’ Dr. Fritzhof Capra, said ‘As we probe the depths of matter, we are forced to make statements about consciousness’.”

It is May 14
^th
, the initial meeting of the group gathered by Peter for the investigation of survival evidence.

Robert is one of them. But a Robert only half present. More and more, he seems to be living a fragmented existence. Literally, he cannot involve himself in anything. It is as though he is suspended in midair, waiting to set his feet down on something solid.

As though, in the midst of daily activities, he is listening for some distant call.

He sits at the far end of the table from Peter, a pad and pencil in front of him. He’d intended to take notes. Instead, he sits there staring at Peter, his mind elsewhere. “Where life after death is concerned,” Peter goes on, “it’s been the religious world versus the scientific world and no communication between them. To the former, immortality is taken on faith. To the latter, it is suspect by definition, inherently unprovable.

“Where, then, does the problem lie where proof is concerned? Essentially in this: do phenomena which seem to indicate survival exist independently or are they products of the psychic abilities of the living?”

Robert forces himself to take some notes but his mind will not focus. He begins doodling.

“In an effort to by-pass this fundamental problem,” Peter says, “attempts have been made to record so-called spirit voices directly on magnetic tape. Other evidence documents cases in which apparent messages from the dead have been received via telephone, telegraph, gramophone, amplifying equipment, even answering devices. To date, however, nothing definitive exists in this area of investigation.”

Robert tries to listen but, instead, can only doodle. He feels guilty at his lack of attentiveness but cannot control it.

“One of the major contributions of psychiatry to psychical research was the creation of the concept of the subconscious mind,” Peter continues. “In survival research however, it has only been a thorn in our side, providing a ready excuse for saying that all so-called ‘discarnate entities’ are creations of the medium’s subconscious intent.”

Robert doodles. Now even his eyes are not focusing. They look as they did at Harrowgate when he wrote the words from
Everyman
on the letter he was preparing for Ann.

“Indeed,” says Peter, “the tendency of the subconscious mind to impersonate does seem native, thus affording us no guarantee that sitters are actually in touch with discarnate agencies.

“Accordingly, despite many painstaking studies through the years, the claim that the medium acts as a go-between linking our world with some other-dimensional worlds has not been substantiated.”

Robert doodles. His eyes are glazed. He is, to all intents and purposes, in a state of trance.

“To establish the existence of spirit agencies will require a far more elaborate design of experimental study than has been hitherto recognized,” Peter says.

E.C.U. of pencil point moving on paper.

“Methods for the elimination of possible error, deliberate trickery or self-delusion must be developed,” Peter goes on. “New approaches must be found to determine whether any incontestable evidence for survival is, in fact, obtainable.”

Peter smiles. “Time out for a good ghost story,” he says.

The group, except for Robert, chuckles. He continues doodling, his gaze fixed, unseeing.

“No rattling chains or drafty castle corridors in this one,” Peter says. “It took place in a hotel just a few years back.”

CUT TO DR. ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS leaving a hotel meeting room, heading for the elevators. She looks exhausted and depressed.

“Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross had just given a speech and was returning to her room,” says Peter’s voice.

She stops in front of the elevators, pushes the button and waits.

“Exhausted by a lengthy speaking tour, she was thinking, to herself, ‘I’ve done enough of this! I’ve got to phase out of this work!’—this work, of course, being hospices and survival research,” Peter’s voice says.

“Dr. Kubler-Ross?” says a woman’s voice.

Dr. Kubler-Ross turns and looks at the woman beside her. “Yes?”

“You can’t give up this work for the dying,” the woman tells her. “It’s much too important.”

The elevator doors open and the two women enter, the elevator starts up. Dr. Kubler-Ross blinks. The woman smiles at her. Dr. Kubler-Ross looks away, closes her eyes and shakes her head, looks back.

“You won’t give up this work, will you?” the woman says.

Dr. Kubler-Ross doesn’t know what to say. “This can’t be happening,” she murmurs to herself. She rubs her eyes.

The woman is still there. She gets off the elevator and moves along the corridor, Dr. Kubler-Ross looking at her incredulously.

They stop outside Dr. Kubler-Ross’s room.

“Promise me you won’t give up your work,” the woman says pleadingly.

Dr. Kubler-Ross hesitates, then, abruptly, grabs a piece of paper and a pen from her purse and blurts, “Give me your autograph.”

The woman does so. Dr. Kubler-Ross unlocks her room door and starts in. “Please come in,” she says.

No reply. She looks around. The woman is gone. Dr. Kubler-Ross looks both ways in the long corridor but the woman has vanished.

Dr. Kubler-Ross looks at the slip of paper. We see, in CLOSE UP, the name scrawled across it.

“And there she stood,” says Peter’s voice, “holding, in her hand, the autograph of a former patient she had helped to die many months before.”

BACK TO the meeting, Peter in CLOSE UP. CAMERA DRAWS BACK SLOWLY FROM him.

The reaction to his story subsiding, he continues. “Subject to discussion,” he says, “we will likely commence our study with an examination of deathbed experiences. Indications in this type of study are that they are not hallucinatory caused by illness or drug effect. On the contrary, according to the study made by Dr. Osis, people who are clear-headed see more deathbed visions than those who are not.”

His voice fades as the CAMERA NEARS, THEN REACHES Robert’s head, HOLDS.

CLOSE UP of Robert’s face, blank, mask like.

After several moments, he blinks, “coming out of it”. He looks around apologetically, then, seeing what he’s done on the pad, reacts, staring at it dazedly.

It is a perfect drawing of the half-seen glyph on the Arizona temple wall; the partial symbol on the London disco.

A four-bladed scythe, a circle in its center, each blade with a spear-like projection on its cutting edge, inside the circle a hieretic letter symbol, a step-like configuration on each blade, the one on the upper blade connected to the letter symbol.

Robert stares at it. He has no idea what it represents.

All he knows—or senses—is that his destiny is closing in.

He asks Peter if he knows what the symbol is. Cathy. Everyone at ESPA. Even Dr. Konrad.

None of them do.

On impulse, he phones the lawyer handling his father’s will. Is it possible, he asks, for him to take a look at his father’s journal?

Williker says it isn’t unless Robert accepts the full terms of the will—to continue the dig in Arizona. Further, time is running out. At the end of a year following his father’s death, everything—journal, papers and money—will be given to the Archeology Department of New York University.

Robert backs off. He is curious but unwilling to commit himself to Arizona; it just doesn’t seem to have any real bearing on what he’s going through.

And, anyway, he reasons, if the dig is that important, the Archeology Department of New York University will doubtless take it on.

Barney Edwards calls. He has made arrangements for them to speak to Edith Gage’s parents.

They meet Buster at the address and go up to the Gage apartment.

Edith’s father is grim, unwelcoming. He makes barely veiled allusions to Buster’s “color”. Robert feels uncomfortable with him.

There are three other children in the family; Edith is the second youngest. Her mother, a tired, martyr-like woman speaks to them with tears in her eyes, telling them about her daughter, showing them a photograph of the pretty little girl, finally a prized possession of hers, a small, well-worn Raggedy Ann doll.

The father doesn’t want to let the doll go but accedes grumpily when Cathy promises they’ll bring it back. Then they leave, retiring to the nearest coffee shop. “I do my best work in coffee shops,” Buster says.

In the shop, Buster holds the doll and stares at it. He strokes the doll’s head.

“Playin’ with yo’ doll?” a young black snickers, passing the table.

“I’ll play with yo’ head,” Buster says, starting out of the booth.

Robert restrains him and Buster sits back down, cursing under his breath. Regaining control, he holds the doll again and stares at it, strokes it idly.

Finally, he makes a face.

“I get carrots,” he tells them. “Why do I get carrots?”

“Is it possible she’s… buried in a carrot field?” Cathy suggests uneasily.

Buster runs his fingers over the doll. “A carrot field in Manhattan?” he says.

“Could be Long Island,” Robert suggests.

“No, she’s in Manhattan,” Buster says. “I know that. She’s somewhere in the city.”

Cathy swallows. “Is she—alive?” she asks.

Buster holds the doll, gazing at it unblinkingly. Suddenly, he looks at them.

“I think she is,” he tells them.

That night, in bed together, Robert and Cathy talk about the search for Edith Gage (on the basis of Calvin’s belief that she’s alive, Edwards is going to try to increase the search force again) and Peter’s survival research.